Have you ever felt the need to disappear?
Not in the runaway sense of the word.
Disappear as in to separate yourself from the world, just for a while, to think and breathe and simply be?
In which you don’t want to do anything in particular, don’t even want to be anywhere, but just put some distraction on in the background and feel as though your very being is just invisible? To feel as though you take up space and yet at the same time take up no space at all? To have some time in which to step away from the pressures of everyday life and to just block things out for a while?
I do.
Often it ends up eating into my time to work or sleep, but with the full-on nature of my current general week, this time is the time I need to keep me sane.
Maybe I’ll fill it with music in the background and admin time, maybe I’ll put music on in the background and read, but I’ll always need that space to just be.
Sometimes I’ll be at home, so it’ll be ok, but other times, if I’m in the middle of something at uni, it becomes very difficult.
I have a fidget cube, which does wonders for my hands that feel a near constant need to fidget, but there’s only so much I can do when I don’t have it.
Once I had just come out of a tutorial. The tutorial itself wasn’t inherently bad, but it was made plain that I needed to sort out some of my working and time-structuring priorities, something I was already aware of.
Those tutorials had always been intense, meaning every time I came out of them I ended up giving a sigh of release of the pressures expected of me. This week, despite my work itself pleasing my tutor, I felt as though I had let everyone down and I just needed to disappear for a while.
Desperately so.
So I went to the library, found a seat in a quiet zone. I put on a film soundtrack that I generally find calming and relaxing, I did admin to sort out my working hours, and I felt invisible for a while. Then the soundtrack ended and that feeling came back, so I put it on again, and it helped, a bit.
I let myself just be for a while.
Familiar, comfortable music, little to no communication with other people, a steadily emptying library, finishing my admin, and letting my thoughts loose for a while before moving on to do something else I enjoyed.
And it helped, it really did.
I always dread those times in which I don’t have the time or space I need to calm my soul for a while. The relief I feel when I’m finally able to vanish back into my own little world is unbelievably strong.
If you need to disappear for while, if you can, go and do it. It’s better to have time to yourself to let your soul calm down than it is to try to push through too far.
Everyone needs a break once in a while.
Everyone needs a time to disappear.
Let yourself be.
